Deadfall: Hunters (13 page)

What a craphole.

So, quick history lesson. Let’s start with Haiti. While most of the Caribbean was discovered and colonized mainly by the Spanish way back when, this little section of the island known as Hispaniola, which also has the Dominican Republic, was colonized primarily by the French who were sick and tired of the Spanish getting all of the glory, prestige, and primarily, riches, of the newly discovered Americas. The French quickly caught on to the fact that money was to be made here mostly by growing sugar. Now, sugar cane is a crop that requires a lot of labor to be successful. It takes many bodies to plant, harvest, and then to refine the sugar. Lots of bodies. With that in mind, the French went right along with the importation of slaves from Africa. And I mean, they went all out. So much to say that it wasn’t long before the slave community easily out-populated the French community by a long shot.

Now, as time goes by, the world changes with it. In our soon to be United States, men there had grown sick of their ‘masters’ England telling them what to pay and when without really consulting them on that matter. So they did what any rational strong headed American would do, and started a revolution. We all know how that went. What most people don’t know is that when that whole ordeal was over and done with, a lot of other colonies around the world looked at the USA as an example and decided it was their turn to throw off the shackles of tyranny. In Haiti, it was no different, except that the slaves were just tired of being slaves and being beaten to death and treated like property. So they took a headcount, realized that there were about ten of them to each white man who beat them, and said enough is enough.

Now, ok, it’s way more complicated than that. There were all sorts of issues with the caste society with mixed people, and then free black people, and throw in the British and the Spanish always loving to mess with the French. In the end, France was just too busy with war in Europe, gave freedom to the slaves, tried to take it back, and then got their ass handed to them.

It’s the only time in humanity’s history where a slave army was victorious to the point of establishing their own country. And what a country. Shortly after they establish their country, they wipe out thousands of white people, and are left with people of mixed descent still owning most of the wealth and land and you can bet that never sat right with anyone.

And that was over two hundred years ago. The poor country has never been able to get a good foot forward. It’s a poor country that has consistently been run by dictators of some sort or another. It’s kind of ironic, that a slave people were able to fight for real freedom, only to live under the tyranny of many of its own.

Now, for most Americans, all they know about Haiti is that huge earthquake that hit some years back and just tore it up. The poor country got even more messed up and suddenly people of all sorts back in the USA were clamoring to help the poor country. I guess, only in times of disaster.

NOW…

Fort Liberte. We sailed into the bay of, you guessed it, Fort Liberte, about a day and a half after leaving the floating island of boats. The coast of Haiti up to that point had been beautiful, an odd bright green to it that I, for some reason, didn’t expect. Something fresh to it. When there are no more people hacking at the countryside for food it meant that the natural order of things could be reestablished.

So we sailed into the bay, and were looking around for the fort. See, I had seen many pictures of Spanish forts on these islands. They were huge, rock castles with cute pointy little towers that would jut out into the sea. They were massive things, or at least, very solid. I had been talking about them for days, and that is what we were expecting. Now, I know it was the French that built it, but, they were just as good at forts as the Spanish were. So when we first saw the fort, we were quite disappointed.

There may have been something there at one point in time, something maybe even glorious. But what we saw was like something out of an archeological dig. Crumbled walls, cracks all over, and certainly nothing imposing and glorious, not even ornate or architectural. Nope. It was a crumbling, decrepit, old worn down fort. Janine had mentioned that maybe it was just due to Deadfall, but anyone could see that wasn’t the case. This wasn’t the result of people failing to maintain a solid rock fort for a year or so. Nope, this was the result of someone failing to maintain a solid rock fort for two hundred years, or so.

The fort stuck out into the bay right in the middle, with the city behind it somewhere. It really was a great strategic place. If you wanted to keep an eye out for everything coming in, or protect against boats, it was a great spot. It was kind of sad to see it like that. We sailed clear of it and went south a bit to get a glimpse of the city. It wasn’t any better off. Granted, the city probably wasn’t much to begin with, but what was left was in even worse shambles. That, was expected though.

Maxie turned the boat around and began sailing back out towards the bay when both Tague and Janine pointed out that there were people on the fort. A quick look in the binoculars revealed that it wasn’t zombies either, unless our undead friends learned to wave. Maxie brought the ship to a halt in the calm bay waters and within minutes, a small row boat had emerged from some crevice in the fort’s side and in it two men and a woman were rowing out to us.

Maxie brought out his gun and hid it in his belt, just in case, as the boat finished rowing up to us. Large smiles greeted us as the woman translated for the man that wasn’t rowing. She mentioned his name, and I still can’t remember it right. She spoke decent English, if not heavily accented. They welcomed us to Fort Liberte, as they put it, one of the last safe places on Earth. It made me wonder if any of these men and women had been anywhere else before, but we certainly weren’t going to put it past them. They invited us to go into the fort to meet with the ‘captain’ of the castle, not that that made sense. Maxie was going to stay with the boat and after some convincing, we got Janine to agree to stay as well. I just didn’t feel right bringing her in without knowing what was going on.

It may have been stupid, but I felt really safe with Blevin and Tague along.

So the fort.

Twenty one men and twelve women, along with three kids, really young, maybe two to three years old, lived in the broken down fort. According to them they had done a lot of work on the fort to make it livable. Our translator, Emma, let us know how even more in shambles the fort had been. When Deadfall came, as I suspected, these Caribbean islands turned into coffins. There was no army, National Guard or police to at least stem the flow of the rising dead. Instead, as she explained, it felt as if everyone on the island had died at once, and then come after the few that had not. The few that were lucky were those like the residents of the fort. They had found the perfect choke hold. The fort jutted out into the bay, attached to the mainland by a tiny sliver of land. The survivors had created a huge blockade at the entrance, and instead got around on boat. Food was scarce at first, but there was enough. They had recently started growing crops on nearby plots of land, on the other side of the bay. They would go there on their boats, work the fields, and return at night.

They felt safer now. Emma told me that most of the zombies seemed to have left. They had flocked south and now they only ran into a walking dead every few days or so. So they lived here and served as a lighthouse. They showed us the large radio room they had set up, complete with a solar powered array. From this little room, they broadcast signals as far as their power allowed, and called out to other boats passing by. I was surprised with the amount of ships they said they had assisted. In return for random supplies, they would give these survivors water and food. In the past year, they had assisted at least two hundred ships of various sizes. When Tague asked, they even recalled the Americans they had helped just a few months ago.

We met the ‘captain’ of the castle. I still think Emma wasn’t translating his title correctly. This captain was a large black man with what was possibly the largest afro I have ever seen. He had large eyes to, almost bug eyed. It would be freaky if the man wasn’t always laughing. He sat down with us, and with Emma’s help, he asked us all sorts of questions. Some made sense, who we were, where had we come from and where we were going. He was visibly taken aback when we explained we had come from the US. Nearly all the boats that went by were headed to the US. I let him know the great America was in no better conditions than here. Well, it was, but I didn’t want to be a rude guest.

Then he asked us if we had any electronics or gold, of which we said no. Even stranger still, he asked us if we knew anyone on Haiti. Again, we replied no. It wasn’t a lie, really. We were looking for someone, something, here, but we didn’t know anyone. He asked that question a few times, as if he didn’t understand our answers the first time. We simply put we were sailing the waters because it was easier to survive that way. I'm not sure if he liked that answer or not. Emma understood us though. When we were headed back to the boat, she asked us if Haiti was our destination, if this was where we were headed to. I didn’t answer. I can’t even remember what I said to avoid it.

I guess I should have known. The questions were just too weird.

And I just trust everyone.

Ok, let me rephrase that. It’s not that I trust everyone, it’s that I let my guard down and hope that everyone is trustworthy. You see, in this world of undead trying to eat your neck at every turn, my delusional self wants to think that every other living human being out there has your back. Somehow, I tricked myself into thinking that humanity had united against the common foe. That the living stood side by side against the onslaught of evil. Yeah, that’s rather naïve thinking. Men, and women, can’t leave them out of this, are still only out to take care of themselves. And it almost got us again.

Tague reasons that they must have drugged us. We went back to the boat and actually spent the rest of the evening going over all of the trash we had salvaged from the floating island of boats to see if our new found friends might have any use for them. Then, like nothing had happened, we all went to bed. Just like that. Next thing we know, were being dragged from the boat, tied up, and tossed into their little row boat. In my groggy state, I kept waiting for Blevin to go rage against the machine and save the day. I never heard a thing. I barely even remember being tossed around like a rag doll or how I ended up in their makeshift dungeon cell. I just know somehow coming to that morning, or day, I'm not sure. And while I remembered what had happened that night, the kidnapping, I was still surprised to see myself there.

They had Tague and I in the same cell, while Blevin was somewhere else down the hallway. I only knew that because I could hear him screaming through a gag. He was most likely struggling against whatever it was they had tied him up with. At some point, several men came rushing down the hallway and all we could hear was the sickening sound of blunt objects against flesh. Maxie was in the cell directly across from us. I asked him about Janine, but he could only shrug his shoulders. He didn’t remember seeing her the night before. Granted, none of us could remember well.

The captain of the castle, god what a stupid title, came down to our cell that night. The translator came with him, along with some men carrying trays of food. It actually looked like decent enough food, and at that point, I was starving. I mean, what else could they do? Drug us again? Of course, thinking back, they probably could have just poisoned us. Me and my stupid stomach.

Captain Castle, as I will now call him, interrogated us again. No, not torture, but just asking stuff. He really wanted to know why we had come to Haiti. Did we know anyone in Haiti, and why were we lying. The only point violence was involved was when I asked him what he wanted with us. Apparently, that answer was to slap me in the face. A good smack too. I was seeing stars from a slap.

We had no answers for him, because we had none, but Tague picked up something interesting. See, they speak a form of French on the island. It’s Créole really, but close enough. Our man Tague knows French, and was picking up on the parts of the conversation that Emma was not translating for us. Most of it was what we already knew. The captain was somehow really distraught by the fact that we had showed up to Haiti, and were not fleeing from it. But, and here was the big key for us, he mentioned a man named Abraham. Of course, I'm assuming it was a man. The guy didn’t say ‘the man, Abraham’. But the way Tague explained, our captain friend was not a friend of this Abraham. Some kind of rivalry. This Abraham guy had something he wanted.

Of course, that name was oddly enough the only name mentioned in my father’s journal, especially concerning Haiti. Who he was, we had no clue, but my father did. And so we had come on this little trip of ours. Certainly though, it was a clue for us. Now, all we had to do was ask our captor to tell us all about this Abraham.

Sure.

So what were four grown men going to do to get out of our dungeons? Rely on the little girl, of course.

Janine is a sneaky one. I can’t really blame her of course. Everything that happened back in Florida must have changed her. That night, on the boat, she had decided to sleep back down in the engine room. On really hot nights, when the engine isn’t running, which was usually the case, Janine liked to sleep down there. There is this little space just off to the right of the engine. Maxie said it’s where you could install other gear, but he never had. It’s right up against the hull and is really cool. Janine had, after eating, and starting to feel sleepy, crawled down into that space and fallen asleep. When the rest of us were being kidnapped, she slept through it and the idiots from the fort didn’t even think to look that closely in every gap the ship had.